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Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults
- flipp3r 8y agoAs an unmarried Young Adult (in the Netherlands) myself I can give my 2 cents about why I wouldn't get married; I've simply taken to heart the advice nearly every senior developer would give me; Don't EVER get married.
- pavlov 8y agoGetting married is fine! Just have a prenuptial agreement. A standard template for your country is probably one Google search away.
- briandear 8y agoUsing any legal document from a Google search is incredibly bad advice. That’s like diagnosing disease from reading WebMD.
- TomMarius 8y agoYeah, basically any senior I worked with said that. And it seems to be working, I'm happy.
- tptacek 8y agoThat is very weird advice. I've been a software developer since the mid-1990s, when I was a teenager, got married at 21, had two kids, started several companies, sold some of them, and getting married is easily the single best decision I ever made. I would like to gingerly suggest that this is a subject for which you might not want to sole-source your advice from software developers. We are an odd lot.
- sjg007 8y agoMarried men live longer too.
- gxigzigxigxi 8y agoSomething something correlation causation
- PeterisP 8y agoAs far as I recall, there were studies showing some causal effect in the behavioral difference of how early things like cancer were diagnosed. In essence, the average man living with a female partner would get a "nuisance" investigated, diagnosed with cancer, and (sometimes) treated; while the average single man sought treatment only when the condition was truly disturbing, and by that time it's too late to treat the cancer.
- stcredzero 8y agoThere are a lot of instances where long married men lose their wives then die very soon afterwards. When there's a correlation of something with longevity and removing the something is soon followed by death, then there's good reason to believe the causation theory.
- barrow-rider 8y agoTrue for both partners -- usually after one dies the elderly widow/widower tend to have ~5 years or less. Some of that is just timing, like if the average age of death per the actuary tables is like 79, and your spouse dies at 80, you're statistically going fairly soon as well.
- postsantum 8y agoMen who die early are less likely get married
- thaumasiotes 8y agoThis is actually a topic that has received a lot of investigation. It's true that men who marry differ, before marriage, from men who don't. But it also seems to be true that marriage has a strong causal effect on male behavior.
- derefr 8y agoPerhaps software developers in the Netherlands have geographically-clustered attitudes about marriage that more closely resemble those of Dutch adults generally (or maybe Dutch academics or trades-workers specifically), than software developers generally.
- sjg007 8y agoYeah cause you guys have health insurance.. ;)
- simplify 8y agoKeep in mind that unhappily married or divorced people are the ones who are more likely to say something about it. I'm happily married. I don't really mention it, and I'm sure others in a similar situation do the same.
- sheepmullet 8y agoAs a man why would you be interested in marriage? The divorce courts are not exactly friendly to men.
- seandoe 8y agoMy girlfriend and I have been together for several years. We're happy. We're not religious at all. I don't see why we have to declare our relationship commitment to the government. Beyond that, our incomes are similar and after some research it looks as if we would pay more in taxes if we were married. Plus, my girlfriend has substantial student loan debt and is on the public service loan forgiveness track. Her monthly payments are based on her income. If we were married my income would be considered and her payments would go up significantly. So... marriage?
- tptacek 8y agoIf it doesn't make sense, don't do it! The concept isn't hard to get your head around. Businesses draw up similar contracts all the time. You're just expressing a formal mutual accountability. It enables one partner to "safely" make sacrifices (or exploit time preference). If you don't want to be accountable to each other in a formal way, by all means, keep your relationship informal.
- yowza 8y agoBy far, the best response.
- devwastaken 8y ago>to the government Marriage has privledges it grants that you may find necessary when you least expect. Medical responsibility is one of them. You don't have a say in their medical treatment if they are unconscious or otherwise unable to make judgements. I understand not wanting the religious part, and I understand reviewing the cons of marriage and rejecting it, but making it about the 'government knowing' is the least of the problem really.
- jdavis703 8y ago> but making it about the 'government knowing' is the least of the problem really. In the case of divorce that actually becomes very important. You now have a judge from the government who is making life decisions for you and your family. Source: grew up in a divorced household.
- setquk 8y agoHonestly I think this is a good thing. If I knew what I knew now, from my own relationship after being married for 20 years, and observation of friends, I would not have got married. People can drift apart. Situations change. Health problems get between you. What can remain is obligation and legal difficulty for a lot of people and nothing more. And in some countries, such as the UK where I live, this is a massive problem because the law is predatory and unfair towards one or both parties. This is an inescapable risk as well. I am extremely lucky with the respect that we are extremely good friends, but we go our own ways now and cross paths to look after our children together and share our advantage of working together to go forwards in life. We are still bound by law however which makes it difficult to be independent once tied if you need to be and is also a situation which is expensive and difficult to change. And the only reason we got married was it was seen as the done thing and a lot of peer pressure from the last generation. I've learned to think about things as calculated risks and not take advice from my parents now.
- Gibbon1 8y ago> the law is predatory and unfair towards one or both parties. When I got divorced 20 years ago some of my friends thought it was unfair that my ex took $20k (of $40k) out of savings, packed her stuff and left. When I tell that to men my age they're like HFS!!! fist bump Another fiend got divorces, wife got full custody, child support and alimony. The take was so much he and his two kids had to move back into his mom's two bedroom house. Friend of mines after she married her husband quit his job and started playing video games full time. Spoonged off her for ten years till she divorce him. And so now he's legally sponging off her using his partial custody as a lever. Currently I have a GF who's been unemployed for a year. Sort of typical in her industry. If we were married we'd be hosed because health insurance would cost me another $800/month. That aside, problem with the law is the law can't cover the myriad of ways people can get screwed over in relationships. My take is don't get married it either allows the other person to screw you or gives others the ability to screw you.
- stcredzero 8y agoSo no consummation and no open marriages, got it.
- tuxxy 8y agoI'm 22, not religious (escaped religion, actually), and I live with my partner. We're a bit over one year having lived together and I would say we're very happy. We have both decided to not discuss marriage until we're 26. We both know that people change and we want to make sure we both have our independence and our early 20s.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoWhat exactly is it that you're saving your early 20s for?
- graycat 8y agoFor a species with a lot of weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree, Darwin has a solution.
- sheepmullet 8y agoAn interesting thought experiment: what would marriage have to be like to make marriage appealing again?
- jdavis703 8y agoIt would need to be as easy as starting or quitting a job. There also couldn't be pre-conditions around it such as a limit of two people, prohibitions on same-sex marriage, and bans on "adultery."
- sheepmullet 8y agoBut then what are the advantages? I think we should have a few different types of marriage and then see what people choose. For example one marriage option could be the man gets automatic full custody of the kids in the event of a divorce. We could have another free and easy option like you are suggesting. Etc. Then we let the market sort it out.
- tptacek 8y agoYou are describing an arrangement totally unlike marriage. If you want termination-at-will, don't get married! If there is some social pressure to get married when you don't want to, that pressure is wrong; you should only get married when you're sure it's the right thing to do. On the other hand, at least in the US, there are huge numbers of people who fought for decades just to have the right to enter into the arrangement we're pretending needs to be fundamentally re-thought.
- jdavis703 8y agoThe idea is to get some of the government benefits of marriage without the overhead, i.e. the ability to make medical decisions and potentially lower tax rates depending on income situations. Past generations of my family were prohibited from marriage because of race. It took a lot of rethinking of what marriage was for them to be granted those rights, ditto for LGBT people who just got those rights a few years ago in the US. There's still no reason why the current definition of marriage is the right definition.
- samspenc 8y agoThe interesting things is that the total numbers don't match - does that imply that more young people are single? For example, age 18-24: drop of 22.6% married or with partner * 1968 = 39.2% married + 0.1% with partner = 39.3% * 2018 = 7.3% married + 9.4% with partner = 16.7% Age 25-34: drop of 26.6% married or with partner * 1968 = 81.5% married + 0.2% with partner = 81.7% * 2018 = 40.3% married + 14.8% with partner = 55.1%
- johnm1019 8y agoAs someone who lived abroad for 6+ years then returned to my home country happily married I want to give out this advice: if living/working abroad from your home country and having your partner with you is an important part of your life plan - get married now. This includes couples who have the same citizenship but might go abroad for work/travel for an extensive period of time. While many countries have domestic partnerships, and other forms of legal "pair-hood" you could also theoretically use, it's often not recognized across country lines and many times can slow down and really complicate paperwork because foreign jurisdictions don't understand the law in other countries. Without it your ability to get travel/resident/work documents in foreign countries together can spiral out of control or not happen at all. Then you would have to choose between your life goal, dream job, or significant other. This is one of those things many people I've spoken with never considered or knew about (why would you!) until it was too late and -- had they been "married" for 2/3/5 years or some threshold, everything would've been a cakewalk.
- barrow-rider 8y ago+1 Canadian immigration gave us hell because we could only prove the relationship existed for 11 months and 3 weeks (gotta be able to prove 1 year). In the end we were saved by online pizza receipts and amazon orders that proved we were living in the same place at the same time for a while. Delayed the application for months though. Should have just put a ring on it earlier, even if a pro-forma sign-at-the-courthouse thing.
- charlieflowers 8y agoI have also heard that some people are now having sex outside of marriage.
- civilian 8y ago(People have always had sex outside of marriage. If anything, the current generation is doing it with honest communication, rather than going behind their partner's back.)
- derefr 8y agoIf you're suggesting that as a justification for an assumed rise in rates of casual sex among youth, well, forget it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex...
- charlieflowers 8y agoI guess it was somewhat subtle, but my post was intended as a joke.
- apricot13 8y agoI got it!
- brobdingnagians 8y agoMarriage is hard, so is starting a company. But both are worth it and incredibly rewarding; you learn a lot and you experience things in married life that you can't in any other way. There is something about the lifelong commitment which changes things, and that is amazing to me.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- detcader 8y agoTo paraphrase someone else, marriage has, historically, been a pretty atrocious institution for women. Maybe as women as a class become educated and conscious of history, there is now an ambient awareness of this.
- tetra_proxy 8y agoI am 27 and I've been with my current partner for almost 3 years and we've semi-lived together most of that time. She's currently still at university so we spend weekends and holidays together. Her parents are divorced and mine are married but miserable, also neither of us has any religious drive to get married (I'm pagan and shes agnostic). We agreed early on that neither of us wants to get married or have kids but we plan on spending our lives together.
- DanBC 8y agoHave you written wills?
- gremlinsinc 8y agothis is horrible...the eroding of the morals/values of America...jk I'm an ex-mormon now agnostic... who cares if two people live together, who cares if lgbt's get married...live and let love...